Stood like a slumbering giant, shrouded in impenetrable shade;
Then I pass’d into the citizen’s garden, and marked a tree clipt into shape
(The giant’s locks had been shorn by the Delilah-shears of Decorum),
And I said, “Surely Nature is goodly; but how much goodlier is Art!”
I heard the wild notes of the lark floating far over the blue sky,
And my foolish heart went after him, and, lo! I blessed him as he rose.
Foolish! for far better is the trained boudoir bullfinch,
Which pipeth the semblance of a tune, and mechanically draweth up the water;
And the reinless steed of the desert, though his neck be clothed with thunder,
Must yield to him that danceth and “moveth in the circles” at Astley’s.